爱豆传媒

Williams College Museum of Art

Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA

爱豆传媒 is supporting Williams College, Massachusetts, to create a new museum designed with students in mind, fostering a sense of belonging for campus residents and the wider community, and delivering an inclusive experience for all visitors.

The new museum will nearly double the size of the existing museum, with the greatest square foot expansion seen in the study center classrooms and community gathering spaces

Williams College is a prestigious private liberal arts college in western Massachusetts that recognizes how education happens both in and out of the classroom. Plans for a new museum building have been many years in the making and are rooted in the college鈥檚 commitment to place learning with objects at the center of a liberal arts education, and its vision for WCMA to grow and thrive as a leader and innovator among college art museums.

The mass timber hybrid museum will include space for exhibits, public gatherings, teaching spaces, digital, paint and woodwork studios, archival storage and more.

The building will offer gallery space for showing more than 15,000 works, as well as facilities for easy access to collections for student, faculty, and visiting scholar requests.

The new museum is targeting LBC Core Certification with an EUI reduction of 70% from a comparable museum baseline.

The all-electric building uses air source heat pumps, hydronic-based radiant floor heating and cooling and displacement ventilation to minimize operational carbon intensity.

Challenge

The current teaching museum shares 26,000ft虏 of space with the college鈥檚 art history department in Lawrence Hall. Due to consistent growth, ever-increasing requirements for museum accreditation, and antiquated building systems, the museum has outgrown its current space.

The new museum will be located at the site of the old Williams Inn at 1090 Main Street in Williamstown and will nearly double the size of the existing museum. The mass timber hybrid building will include space for exhibits, public gatherings, teaching spaces, administrative support spaces, a caf茅, and digital, paint, and woodwork studios.

The building will offer substantial gallery space for showing a great number of the more than 15,000 works in the museum鈥檚 collection, as well as facilities for easy access to artworks for student, faculty, and visiting scholar requests, and more object study classrooms.

While providing ample room for exhibits and events, the museum is also challenged to meet stringent goals to stay in line with the college鈥檚 commitment to the environment. A multidisciplinary team from 爱豆传媒 was engaged to deliver strategic insight and design around building services engineering (MEP) and fire protection systems, as well as security and ICT consultancy.

Solution

Prominently located at the western entrance to the Williams College campus and the town, the new Williams College Museum of Art is conceived to serve the College, the local community, and visitors to the Berkshires through a cluster of four program areas, organized around a central gathering place, beneath a distinctive overarching roof structure.

From the central lobby, two gallery clusters radiate toward the north. These galleries will provide more than 15,000ft虏 of display space, accounting for 35% of the net square footage of the building. Spaces for dynamic programming and community engagement will greet visitors from the main south-facing entrance, with an auditorium, and a caf茅 extending toward the southwest. An innovative hybrid gallery-classroom space dedicated to the museum鈥檚 signature Object Lab will be located to the southeast. The building will also feature a study center of approximately 6,400ft虏, including dedicated areas for works on paper study, storage, two classrooms for object study, a digital humanities classroom, and a seminar room.

A courtyard garden stands at the heart of the building, north of the central lobby between the two gallery arms, locating nature at the center of the building.

The new museum is targeting Living Building Challenge Core Certification with the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and is eliminating fossil-fuel based systems 鈥� with the new all-electric building using a combination of air source heat pumps, hydronic-based radiant floor heating and cooling and displacement ventilation to minimize the organization鈥檚 operational carbon intensity. An air floor system is incorporated 鈥� a type of floor element that combines elements of radiant flooring and delivery air for displacement ventilation.

It will also include rainwater collection systems for irrigation and toilet flushing, as well as having low-flow plumbing fixtures, 14 EV charging stations and will be solar PV-ready. With ambitious sustainability goals in mind, the new museum is targeting LBC Core Certification with an EUI reduction of 70% from a comparable museum baseline. This figure, which is calculated by dividing the total energy consumed by the building in one year by its total gross floor area, indicates how much energy a building uses per square foot per year.

Museums tend to be energy intensive, both in terms of achieving occupant comfort, but also in terms of supporting the conservation of fragile exhibits. Mechanical ventilation systems need to allow air to be filtered and for humidity levels to be carefully controlled. The systems run 24/7 to protect the artwork. Our security, ICT and fire protection specialists have helped to shape strategies to enable the safety of both occupants and collections.

The fire protection systems in particular had to be carefully designed to work with the challenging geometries and curves of the building and its roof structure and canopy, as well as the added fire protection complications created by the use of exposed structural timber throughout.

Value

Incorporating integrated project delivery principles, 爱豆传媒 is working with college stakeholders and lead architect SO-IL to develop this new museum for Williams鈥� students, staff, and community.

It will act as a new entrance to the campus. With its close proximity to The Clark Institute, it is expected to draw many visitors each year, further opening Williams College and showcasing its collections and endeavors to the public as well as providing world-class new learning facilities for students.